I am proud to announce that the year of 2018 marks the 25th Anniversary since I started to create, develop and implement seismic isolation technologies in Armenia. It has been a hard path indeed, but with God’s help and my persistence, I was able to successfully struggle my way through, overcome the conservatism, opposition and malice of state officials and of the so called "earthquake resistant construction experts". As a result, in the field of seismic isolation a small and developing country like Armenia now stands side by side with more powerful and advanced countries. Currently, by the number of seismic (base and roof) isolated buildings (more than 50) per capita Armenia is the second in the world after Japan. In this regard, the opinion of the well-known scientist Prof. Stavros Anagnostopoulos, expressed in his interview to the Journal of the Builders Union of Armenia – Architecture and Construction, #6(64) of June 2011, about the works performed by the author of this paper is presented: “Prof. Mikayel Melkumyan is a very well-known worldwide for his pioneering works on this technique, base isolation, which is probably the future of the earthquake protection. Prof. Melkumyan published a book with his contributions in earthquake engineering in Armenia and with all the pioneering works of base isolated buildings that he has designed here in Armenia. Now, from my international experience I do not really know anyone else and anywhere else in the world who has made so many designs of base isolated buildings. In this respect, I think that Prof. Melkumyan has placed Armenia in one of the top countries in the world as far as application of base isolation is concerned. As the matter of fact, if you take into account the size of Armenia, I would imagine that maybe Armenia is in the top two to three countries where base isolation has been used so extensively. I can tell you now that among many people in the world who worked and carry our research on base isolation Mikayel is unique in the fact that he is not only doing research in base isolation but he applies it as an engineer and you cannot find that many people worldwide who combine this – generating the knowledge and also applying the knowledge; and I am in the unique position to appreciate the difficulties in taking some theoretical research results and apply them into practice and making them practically useful. This is where Mikayel has to be congratulated. I am sure that his book will be extremely useful not just in Armenia but worldwide in many countries because it is a combination of theory and practice, and most of the books that you will find in the literature on base isolation are mainly theoretical”. To commemorate this Anniversary, we have prepared posters (Table 1) describing our activities and achievements in the field of seismic isolation during the past 25 years. The information in the posters is given in Armenian, English and Russian. We have also compiled a booklet and published it for distribution in Armenia, as well as distributed it electronically among scientists and engineers across the world. And this is all what I could do on my personal means. It is worth noting one of the feedbacks received to the booklet from KPFF Portland Structural Dr. Jeff Diephuis, who wrote: “Congratulations! I hope that one day we begin to design with these systems in the USA as regularly as you do in Armenia. Keep up the good work”. Armenia is well-known as the only developing country where: “…the number of new applications of innovative anti-seismic techniques, especially seismic isolation, is particularly large…”. “Some other countries are beginning to follow the excellent example of Armenia (…where seismic isolators are locally manufactured also for foreign markets…)”; “…an existing bank building at Irkutsk-City in Russia, retrofitted by applying the technology invented by Prof. Melkumyan in Armenia…” (Martelli et al., 2001). Another opinion on Armenia’s achievements in seismic isolation expressed in (Garevski, 2010): “A greater success in application of base isolation (with isolation of a large number of buildings) was achieved in Armenia where, in addition to placement of isolators in buildings, their production was also adopted”. In (Martelli et al., 2012) it is stated that: “Armenia… remains second, at worldwide level, for the number of applications of such devices per number of residents, in spite of the fact that it is still a developing country.” Thus, let me emphasize that in Armenia we have achieved significant results in the development and application of seismic isolation to a large number of buildings and in local manufacturing of about 5100 seismic isolation laminated rubber-steel bearings (SILRSBs).
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